Soumyajit Majumdar on Homecoming, his formative Gandu cameo, and returning to one's roots

Actor-director Soumyajit Majumdar on his debut feature, Homecoming, streaming on SonyLIV
Soumyajit Majumdar
Soumyajit Majumdar

In Homecoming, the first directorial feature by film and theatre actor Soumyajit Majumdar, a group of friends convene for Durga Puja in Kolkata. The film flits through their memories, before uniting them in a common mission: to save their erstwhile theatre space from a commercial takeover. 

Soumyajit drew on his own theatre experiences for the film, and shot it in multiple languages for wider resonance. Calcutta, he feels strongly, is no more the place it used to be. Excerpts from a chat with the actor-director... 

You had a cameo as a local bully in Q's Gandu (2010). It must've been one of your first film experiences. 

I was in my second year of college when Q was judging a mobile video competition in my college where I made a mobile video in which I also acted. From there Joyraj Bhattacharya and Q himself saw me and cast me in Gandu.

The cameo was damn funny because it was improvised, and a sync-sound affair, and I still believe it's the best film to debut in. It's a cult film from Bengal and I have really happy and fond memories of it, including guerrilla shoot and the tea shop we shot in just near Howrah station in this place called 'Baje Shibpur'. We didn't even rehearse there. It was just an improvised performance in two takes and we were done.

I actually learned about the guerrilla process of filmmaking from that film and I found that process very relatable to approach. We later took to our college projects. It was an Indian film being produced by the filmmaker himself who also took up the camera. There was a foreign collaboration in the form of another producer too - Maria, and this entire collaborative approach and the commune feeling in the indie scene, I think gets back to Gandu, where it was developing inside me.

What was the inspiration behind Homecoming?

The (film) was driven by the fact that the stories of independent artists in India as a community or even of theatre groups in India are untold stories, especially on screen. It was there in me subconsciously, being surrounded by independent artists, being born and brought up in an artistic family, meeting independent artists more in school and college fests, most of whom took it up as a profession and have been colleagues now even in the projects I do. So it was definitely that driving force of telling those stories of independent artists which haven't been told. The characters are fictional but the words are true.

There has been a steady artistic brain drain from Kolkata over the decades. Why do you think this happens? 

Lack of opportunities and lack of a proper economy in the arts has made a lot of the intelligentsia migrate to  other cities, which is also another theme explored in Homecoming. I don't know if Homecoming will be able to change the outlook about being in your own city, but definitely, Homecoming is about coming home to your roots. It's a musical love letter as a tribute to Calcutta. So I think that love for your own city will definitely be seeped into the audience's minds for those who had that emotion already among themselves. It will definitely make people think of those who didn't think twice before reconsidering that decision of doing something in your own city and for your own city.

Calcutta has become a migrating city now, but definitely the local element in Calcutta, the Calcutta we have been born and brought up in, the Calcutta which made what we are, we definitely have a responsibility of sharing it out loud with the world. The love for Calcutta was more than the idea to make people change their feelings towards their city for Homecoming. It was more the former — to express their love for Calcutta.

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